Classic Calls the Shots

by Amy Myers

  Looking at Nigel, I decided my money was on Bill. Many ideas sound wacky when spelled out, but in the hands of a master prove to be magic. I couldn’t make Nigel out. He had one of those pleasant faces that tell you nothing. The English when they choose can be every bit as inscrutable as the Chinese. If Angie had been right and there was something going on with these cars, then it would be hard to believe that Nigel wasn’t involved, simply because of his advisory role here combined with his day job. To me he didn’t look as if he could organize his way into an empty garage, but I’ve had enough surprises in my life not to bet on it.

  Zoe duly ushered the Lagonda to a parking spot at the side of the house, beyond Roger’s temporary office, and the first person I set eyes on when we returned to the compound was Dave. He isn’t really a classics man so seeing him here was surprising. He was talking to Nigel, but broke off to walk over to greet me. ‘How’s it going, Jack?’

  ‘Still aching.’

  He regarded me pityingly. ‘Talk sense. I can see you’re back on your feet. I meant how’s the job?’

  He already knew about Angie’s words to Bill, so I told him that both Pen and Joan had indicated there was trouble between her and Nigel and that I would be following up that lead. So far, I told him, the insurance angle seemed OK, so assuming that was the case there must be something I or we were missing.

  ‘With Biddington involved?’ he asked.

  ‘Jury’s out. He seemed ecstatic over seeing the Auburn back, which doesn’t suggest funny business on his part.’

  ‘Unless he forgot to insure it. Inverted commas round the “forgot”.’

  ‘According to Roger Ford, he didn’t. And don’t forget I was attacked after the Auburn was found.’

  ‘Coincidence. Opportunist mugger or a righteous owner thinking you were up to no good,’ Dave retorted.

  ‘If so, there were two righteous owners and muggers. Anyway, I don’t believe in chance. Nathan Wynn has vanished, posted elsewhere.’

  ‘Right. My info is that he’s still with Shotsworth Security, but at an estate car park between Faversham and Whitstable, called Helsted.’

  ‘I’ll follow that up.’ I had a feeling there was a loose connection that I wasn’t making. ‘Harry Prince might be owner and Mark Shotsworth doing the dirty work.’

  ‘Maybe, but I don’t see how that ties in with the attack on you. Still looks like a straight mugging to me.’

  ‘Nothing straight about it,’ I said with feeling. ‘They didn’t pinch anything for a start, except maybe my mobile.’ Then I grasped the loose connection. ‘Missing classics, Dave. Remember that Jag XK150 I told you about?’

  ‘I do. Nicked from outside a posh house near Tunbridge Wells. No sign of it. Insurance paid up like gents after the thirty-day limit for finding it expired. But that Aston you mentioned—’

  ‘Too late. It’s gone.’

  ‘Don’t tell me. One came on the books today, and the number you gave me for the one you saw was false. But we’ve double-checked Gladden and you’re right, not a sign of it. Nicked from Brentwood in Essex. Owner away, only just discovered it missing.’

  ‘Have you tried the Helsted car park? The Aston might have taken it into its head to chug after Nathan Wynn.’

  ‘Not there either. But, guess what, all by ourselves we thought of trying the other car parks guarded – if that’s the right word – by Shotsworth Security. I’ll keep you posted.’

  ‘Thanks. Any instructions?’ I called after him as he left.

  ‘Yes. Keep on taking the pills.’

  I would, if I knew which pill to take. I went to the catering area in the hope of finding Joan, but there was no sign of her. I caught a passing runner, who said Joan was on call for Scene Seven, whatever that might be. The good news was that I could legitimately sit down and eat lunch. From here I had a longshot view of what was going on. There were crew, cast, noise, lights, cameras mounted on cars, cranes, various sound effects, but nothing actually happening in terms of filming, even though I could see two or three of Nigel’s classics moving slowly towards the gates. I thought about their insurance again, although just as with the filming nothing seemed amiss. Roger would hardly be part of any conspiracy to diddle his own company, but there must surely be two insurances involved, not just Oxley Productions’. They would insure the Auburn and other cars for the filming, but there was the private insurance too. Suppose there was an angle to that which had stirred up Angie’s rage.

  I could not collar Bill yet awhile. He was currently cheering on his troops like Montgomery at El Alamein. Like him, Bill was quiet, determined, indefatigable. Did Pen’s wild ravings fit in with that? I couldn’t see it. Nor could I see her around anywhere, although that might be a bad sign. It would be unlike her to abandon enticing fruit here for the picking.

  Baulked of speaking to Joan for the moment, and with Louise, wherever she was, beyond my reach, I looked around for Tom as soon as I’d finished lunch. As well as being in the firing line for Angie’s murder, he was a firm part of the ‘old gang’ and I needed to warn him about Pen’s probable presence, the worm in today’s apple. It wasn’t hard to find him – he was in the ops caravan, admiring his precious storyboards.

  ‘Good, eh?’ he said, justifiably admiring his comically inaccurate sketches of the Auburn and its three companions. He was right to do so because despite their flaws they worked. There was a feeling of threat both in his sketches of the massed cars and in those still making their relentless way up the drive. There was even one of the last scene – my scene as I thought of it, although I hadn’t yet been called. There was a sense of finality in the sketch with a car making its way along the drive alone and somehow isolated in the vast expanse of the ‘Tranton Towers’ estate, representing, I guessed, the false ‘peace’ of Munich and the isolationism of the USA. That car, I thought hopefully, might be my Lagonda.

  ‘I came to warn you there’s a journalist at large,’ I told Tom. ‘She’s digging up old leather and trying to make new shoes out of it. Old leather being Running Tides.’

  ‘Oh?’ He was looking away from me rather too obviously.

  ‘She’s working on a theory that Angie’s murder was connected to it.’

  Very wary now. ‘How’s that then?’

  ‘The crazy idea that Angie killed Margot Croft. That it wasn’t suicide at all.’ I decided not to mention Bill’s inclusion in Pen’s theory.

  Tom merely looked astonished. ‘She shot herself in a car on the cliffs near Folkestone. Everyone knows that.’

  I tested him. ‘Bill’s car?’

  ‘No,’ he said, again surprised. ‘Her own. An Italian job, I think. So how does this Pen woman figure Angie killed her?’

  ‘No idea.’ I didn’t add the word ‘yet’ but I was getting an uneasy feeling that this theory wasn’t going to go away.

  Tom frowned. ‘Angie was a pain in the neck, but it’s rubbish that she could have killed Margot. For a start Margot did not die until after the shooting was finished. Angie wouldn’t have been around.’

  ‘Did you see Angie with Bill while the film was on?’

  ‘Wouldn’t have mattered if I did.’ Tom seemed to find his drawings even more fascinating. ‘She fancied Bill, no doubt about that, and she might have stalked him a bit, but Margot was the one.’

  ‘Was the split his doing?’

  ‘It was. Absolutely.’

  Not quite the story as I’d heard it from Roger, from whom there’d been no mention of Angie being in the picture at all, let alone stalking Bill. ‘Did Margot still want Bill?’

  ‘’Course she did, but she came first in her own mind. Margot was always totally wrapped up in what she was doing and with herself. She loved Bill, no doubt about that, but Margot was her main love. She was another Garbo in a way. She was the flame, Bill was the wick she needed, and, believe me, Bill had to melt wax all round her.’

  ‘If she believed in herself so much, why kill herself?’ I asked.

  ‘She needed Bill. It�
�s not so simple. Margot needed her husband too.’

  ‘Does that fit with her being wrapped up in herself?’ I wondered for one mad moment if Pen could be right, and that Angie saw the threat as ongoing because Margot would never let go her hold over Bill.

  ‘No, it doesn’t,’ Tom said savagely. But with someone like Margot anything goes. You don’t have a plan. You have a mood. And in the mood she killed herself, shot herself with the gun like Bill had.’

  ‘Any doubt it was her gun?’

  ‘None. The coroner went into it thoroughly.’

  ‘How long after filming finished did it happen?’

  ‘A month or so. The cast had scattered and we were in post production stage. Heads down editing. I was involved in that.’

  ‘But not Angie of course.’

  ‘No way. She was background and had gone back to London. On set Bill would have brushed her off like an annoying fly if he’d even noticed her. It was only after Margot’s suicide that she must have come back into the picture and helped him pick up the pieces. I think she got a job in his next film – another extra, and I doubt if Bill had anything to do with that. It took a mighty long time for him to get over Margot’s death. He and Angie didn’t get hitched for another three years.’

  ‘Did you dislike Margot?’

  Tom looked taken aback. ‘Dislike? You’ve got me all wrong. We all loved Margot. You’d have to have met her to understand. She had her head in the clouds one minute, the untouchable Garbo the next, and suddenly she’d be with you, and you were the most important being on earth for her. All genuine. She was charming to everyone, Angie included. She knew Angie’s sort was no threat to her.’

  ‘Was she easy to deal with on set?’

  ‘Always and for all of us. Margot wasn’t an interferer. She wasn’t an angel either. She was wrapped up with her own role and the film, but she left everyone else to get on with their own jobs. She took Bill’s direction like a lamb, she didn’t quarrel with Roger’s handling of the production, she never demanded star’s rights. She loved my storyboards. She was a . . .’ Tom struggled for words.

  ‘A hard act to follow,’ I finished for him. ‘I can see that.’ Now for the ‘innocent’ question. ‘So why did Bill walk out on her?’

  Tom sighed. ‘None of us knew. Probably because she wouldn’t leave her husband.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘Manning? I don’t know. He wasn’t in the film business. Geoff was his name. Geoffrey Manning.’

  As I left, history repeated itself. I ran into Bill again. He seemed to have aged twenty years since I first met him. The strain of the day’s filming on top of everything else was showing.

  ‘Nice car that Lagonda, Jack,’ he said. ‘You’re called for six o’clock. The shadows are right then.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’m looking forward to it.’

  He grunted. ‘Not so fast. Lord Charing takes over for the close-ups. OK?’

  I gulped. ‘Sure.’ As far as I would trust anyone but myself to drive it, Brian would do. ‘I need a word with you, Bill.’ I saw him flinch and quickly added, ‘Some other time?’

  ‘Now,’ he said. ‘My van.’

  This looked as Spartan as a bachelor’s flat. Functional rather than a retreat. Bill sat there with folded arms and waited.

  ‘I need to know the exact words Angie used about the cars that morning,’ I explained. Bill was a pro. If he couldn’t remember, he would tell me. If he spoke, the words would be accurate. There was a silence as he reconstructed them in his mind. ‘I was pulling into the lot,’ he said at last, ‘thinking about the scene I was about to shoot. I heard her say, “You go on set. I’ll see Roger first and tell you later.” Yes, I’m sure that’s right. Then I said, “What about?” She said, “It’s the cars. There’s something odd—” no, “fishy about the cars. That’s why I need to see Roger right away. See you, darling.” That help?’

  He was obviously relieved to be finished and when I nodded, he couldn’t wait to leave and we went our separate ways. This time I noted the words down before I went to find Joan to follow up what she had been intending to say about Nigel and Angie. Or should I track down Pen first, to see what harm she was wreaking? I was fairly sure she hadn’t gone away, and shuddered to think that Bill might get to hear her theory about Angie and, worse, the one that he might have murdered his own wife. Was Pen even now ferreting out the little cogs and screws which she would chuck willy-nilly into an engine of her own making? Knowing Pen, she would have no hesitation in throwing away any that did not suit her purpose – such as that Angie was innocent, for instance.

  I chose Joan in case she was on call again later and found her still costumed and talking to Brian Tegg on seating that had been provided on the lawns at the rear of the manor. Brian was looking very lordly in plus fours, smart Norfolk jacket and cap. When I told him about our rendezvous with the Lagonda, he groaned.

  ‘Have you got something against Lagondas?’ I asked mildly.

  ‘Means another costume change – back into city gear if I’m coming down to Tranton Towers for the weekend. Can’t appear in plus fours and brown shoes. Not done.’

  ‘What part did you play in Running Tides?’ I asked. ‘Officer?’

  ‘Nothing so grand.’ He grinned. ‘I was a waiter in a Lille estaminet.’

  Joan eyed me suspiciously. ‘You look very purposeful, Jack. I’m sorry I had to leave that delightful journalist so abruptly, but I really couldn’t take any more. You want to ask me about that “more”, I suppose.’

  I glanced at Brian, thinking she might not want to speak in front of him, but she said calmly, ‘We all know now what that journalist is proposing to write.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I assured them. ‘I’ll see Pen Roxton off.’

  ‘Do so,’ Brian said with feeling. ‘I have an idea I shall be in her sights soon. I too was in Margot’s toils. We all were. I wasn’t a fan of Angie’s though, as you’ve probably heard, but I don’t see her as a killer.’

  ‘It’s just too bad,’ Joan said vehemently, ‘that woman trying to make a story out of Margot’s death.’

  ‘There must have been something special about that production to keep you all in touch for so long afterwards,’ I said.

  Joan and Brian exchanged glances. ‘It hasn’t been because of Margot’s death,’ Joan answered. ‘That was a private tragedy for me because I was a friend of hers since schooldays, and it was a sadness for us all. In fact the cast dispersed after the wrap party in Chilston Park.’

  ‘But you kept together off and on after that?’ I asked.

  Brian hesitated, then explained, ‘Usually the glue that holds a cast together during the shooting melts pretty quickly afterwards, but when one meets again there’s a shared mutual experience that brings you back together. That’s what happened after Running Tides.’

  ‘And that explains your closeness on set here?’

  Joan answered this time. ‘We’re close, but not because of mutual nostalgia.’

  ‘Shared tragedy?’

  ‘No,’ Brian said vehemently. ‘Call me crackers, but it’s more like Bill’s mood for the film. Menace.’

  Joan went very white. ‘What do you mean?’

  Brian gave a nervous laugh. ‘Almost as though we’re herding together for protection. Don’t you feel that, Joan?’

  ‘I suppose I do. It must be the practical jokes that kept happening. And now this terrible murder. Do you think we’re harbouring some deep dark secret, Jack?’

  ‘Not consciously,’ I said. ‘But I still believe there was something out of the ordinary about Running Tides.’

  ‘Margot,’ Joan said flatly.

  I could see tears in her eyes, and hastily changed the subject. ‘Joan, you implied you’d overheard a row between Angie and Nigel.’

  Joan looked uncomfortable. ‘Angie had rows with everyone.’

  ‘I know, but do you remember what you heard and when over this one? It’s important.’

&n
bsp; I thought she wasn’t going to answer, but eventually she did. ‘It was the Tuesday evening before she died,’ she said after a while. ‘I was in the canteen, in the part that extends into the foot of the L shape. I wouldn’t have been visible to them, and I didn’t like to announce my presence. I’m not sure if I can remember what was said.’

  It was bad practice but I had to prompt her. ‘Was it about the Auburn?’

  Joan looked more hopeful. ‘It was mentioned. She said something like, “It’s more than the Auburn involved, isn’t it? You didn’t bank on it going missing, did you?” Nigel sounded alarmed, and said, “You’re barking up the wrong tree”, to which she replied, “Maybe, but I’m going to chop yours down”.’

  If Joan was right, I thought, that implied the Auburn wasn’t the main issue, which might explain why he could have been genuinely excited when I found the car. But what was the ‘more’ – and was Angie’s threat serious enough to have brought about her death?

  With this new scent to follow, at least I had more cogs of my own to work on, and my engine was going to be one that worked, not a mad design by Pen Roxton.

  At about five thirty I slid into the Lagonda barely noticing my aches and pains in my excitement over being immortalized on film. I’d given Brian the instruction he needed for the Lagonda, and was pleased that at least I would get to drive it through the Syndale Manor gates, as this was to be filmed in longshot. After that Lord Charing would take the wheel for the approach to ‘Tranton Towers’. Even so I was provided with headgear identical to Brian’s just in case the camera picked me up.

  Actually being in the film for a modest moment was giving me a whole new dimension on the day’s proceedings. I was no longer an outsider, but a minuscule part of the gang. I wondered hopefully if I’d get paid, as some paperwork had been whisked before me and details of the Lagonda hastily recorded. I decided not to press the point, and to wait to see if I had a happy surprise.